Dr. Nóirín Russell:

If a better test could be applied in cervical screening, I can assure the Deputy that I would be one of the first people in the Houses asking that Ireland move to it. We have done that once already, in March of this year, when we moved from cytology screening to HPV testing because it is a better test. The Deputy's question about whether we should perform a review of all the women who have received a normal result is the exact same thing as screening, and screening will never find all the women with cancer. The same test can be performed over and over again, and the women can be screened and rescreened, but it takes away valuable resources from screening the women who were due to be screened to look back and rescreen women who have been screened. One will never find and predict all the women in that cohort who will go on to develop cancer. Screening is not able to do that.